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| Students are engaged in a 1-to-1 tablet classroom. |
The focus of the Sublette County School District #1 Technology Program is to ensure all students at SCSD #1 are prepared for their future, a world of digital technology and information. As we start the twenty-first century, excellence in education requires technology to be seamlessly integrated throughout the educational program. Increasing access to technology is essential for that future, and the learning tool of these twenty-first century students is the Internet and a mobile device.
The individual use of a mobile device is a way to empower students to learn at their full potential and to prepare them for the real world of college and the workplace. Today’s students represent the first generation to grow up using digital technology. They have spent their entire lives using tools of the digital age. Teaching 21st Century fluencies through the integration of technology encourage students to solve problems and think critically by stimulating analytical thinking. Learning results from the continuous dynamic interaction among students, educators, parents and the extended community. Technology immersion does not diminish the vital role of the teacher. To the contrary, it transforms the teacher from a provider of knowledge to a facilitator of information and learning. Learning with mobile devices integrates technology into the curriculum anytime, anyplace.
Technology integration is an integral part of the teaching and learning process in order to provide students opportunities to apply 21st Century fluencies and become digital citizens. By engaging these skills students will develop:
Information Fluency: the ability to unconsciously and intuitively interpret information in all forms and formats in order to extract the essential knowledge, authenticate it, and perceive its meaning and significance.Apply basic computing skills in authentic, integrated ways to solve problems, complete projects, and extend their work.
Solution Fluency: the ability to think creatively to solve problems in real time by clearly defining the problem, designing an appropriate solution, applying the solution then evaluating the process and the outcome.
Collaboration Fluency: team working proficiency that has reached the unconscious ability to work cooperatively with virtual and real partners in an online environment to create original digital products.
Creativity Fluency: the process by which artistic proficiency adds meaning through design, art and storytelling. It regards form in addition to function, and the principles of innovative design combined with a quality functioning product.
Media Fluency: There are two components of Media Fluency. Firstly, the ability to look analytically at any communication media to interpret the real message, how the chosen media is being used to shape thinking, and evaluate the efficacy of the message. Secondly, to create and publish original digital products, matching the media to the intended message by determining the most appropriate and effective media for that message.
In order to provide students with opportunities to apply Career and/or College Readiness Skills, technology integration is an integral part of the teaching and learning process. By engaging these skills students will be able to:
- Apply basic computing skills in authentic, integrated ways to solve problems, complete projects, and extend their work
- Prepare for career and/or college, and global society
- Apply ethical standards to communications
- Contribute to the social and civic fabric of communities
College and Career Readiness Skills include:
- Use technology effectively and productively
- Think critically, solve problems, and make decisions
- Conduct research and use information
- Communicate and collaborate
- Demonstrate creativity and innovation
SCSD1 has a goal of providing every student 1-to-1 access to computers in the next 1-2 years. What began as a three classroom 1:1 pilot program in the 2011-2012 school year has grown to a program where every student in grades 3-8 have their own convertible tablet laptop computer. This rollout began at the begining of the 2012-2013 school year. Grades 3-5 leave the laptops in the classroom while grades 6-8 take their devices to every class and home every night. Grades 9-12 have access to laptop carts in nearly every classroom and computer labs. We expect to transition to a student attached device model in the 2013-2014 school year.
While we already had an impressive set of technology tools including SmartBoards, document cameras and assistive audio in every classroom, we know the importance in providing the necessary training and infrastructure to support the use of technology for instruction. It's important to emphasize the function of technology is to engage students and facilitate learning. Technology has always been and always will be a tool to providing better instruction.
Over this past summer we hired an Instuctional Facilitator for Technology. His role is to provide classroom assistance in helping teachers use technology for exactly that purpose- to improve instruction and faciltate learning.
Sublette County School District #1 is focused to provide the technology and training that other schools can use to model their own successful technology integration programs. We expect our technology to be second to none.
